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November 07, 2008
America to Germany: "We'll show you something green".
Hermann the German reports that Germans are mad at the U.S. again. After Germany's brief honeymoon with the two-day old Obama-Biden new America, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed serious misgivings about President-elect Obama’s sincerity on environmental issues, "thus gently ushering in the next era of Germany’s unfortunate but necessary disillusionment with America."
According to Hermann, the Obama camp's response was very Yank-like:
An unofficial spokesman for the President-elect said the new administration will most certainly examine Herr Steinmeier’s suggestion very thoroughly and quite intensely but for the moment “We got your new green deal for you right here, pal.”
Germans, tree-loving pagans and wariors of the woods, have a thing about "green". Armnius, hero of Germany, led a coalition of Germanic tribes to victory in 9 AD over a Roman army of Augustus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Centuries later, Martin Luther, legend has it, got tipsy and nicknamed Armnius "Hermann the German".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Keeping Clients and Customers: Why not compete on "Ease-of-Use"?
If the following seems like a previous post, you are right. We'll keep publishing a version of it until "Ease-of-Use" as a term of art/catch phrase replaces "Customer Service". WAC? is convinced that "Customer Service" throws people, bores people or renders them straight-up Numb...
What if the Services Sector, now King, competed for clients and customers on the basis of "Ease-of-Use"?
Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts for products and goods to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services? Law. Accounting. Consulting. Advertising. Newer and non-traditional services, too. Anything where a service (something valuable but "invisible") or product-service mix is part of what you pay for. In other words, pretty much Everything these days--and the direction global markets now march, in good and bad times.
Consider for a moment just products. In 2006, The Folgers Coffee Company was awarded an Ease-of-Use Commendation by the Arthritis Foundation for its AromaSeal™ Canister. If you're a Folgers® drinker, you notice that Folgers® added an easy-to-peel tin freshness seal (no need for a can-opener), a new "snap-tight" lid and even a grip on its plastic red can.
Folgers® did it for coffee cans. IBM and CISCO have ease-of-use programs for the products they sell.
The great companies many of us represent do spend money and expertise on making their goods, equipment and products usable. Think about your car, your luggage, your TV remote (well, strike that one), your watch and even grips on household tools. Think about Apple, Dell and Microsoft. Each year they think through your experience with their products and try to make it better. Continuous improvement models for "things."
Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services? Sure, why not?
It's probably coming anyway, even while it will be infinitely harder to do for services than for products. WAC? has noted before that even corporate clients that sell goods see themselves as selling solutions and not products. In 2004, services sold alone or as support features to the sale of goods and products accounted for over 65% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, 50% of the United Kingdom's GDP and 90% of Hong Kong's. Even products sold by IBM and CISCO, now chiefly service companies, are part of a services-products mix in which the services component is the main event.
Law firms, of course, have always sold services. And we are a small but powerful engine in the growth of the services sector. We strategize with and guide big clients every day. While that's all going on--day in and day out--what is it like for the client to work with you and yours? Are clients experiencing a team--or hearing and seeing isolated acts by talented but soul-less techies? Do you make reports and communications short, easy and to the point? Who gets copied openly so clients don't have to guess about who knows what? Is it fun (yeah, we just said "fun") to work with your firm? How are your logistics for client meetings, travel and lodging? Do you make life easier? Or harder? Are you accessible 24/7? In short, aside from the technical aspects of your service (i.e., the client "is safe"), do your clients "feel safe"?
What if law firms--or any other service provider for that matter--"thought through," applied and constantly improved the delivery of our services and how clients really experience them?
And then competed on it...?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
Obama-Biden on international law and policy.
The DC-based American Society of International Law (ASIL) has compiled the policy statements of President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden on international law-related matters. The statements also include Obama’s response to an ASIL survey.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2008
"The Globalization of the Legal Profession"
See Empirical Legal Studies, an interdisciplinary law prof site, and the upcoming HLS conference mentioned.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Our vote for White House Chief of Staff.
It's Chicago North Side Congressman, boy wonder and pit bull Rahm Emanuel, former White House staffer, and from the most amazing and increasingly-celebrated batch of Chicago kids in one family you could dream up. See Washingtonion.com. Emanuel has the added advantage of not being a lawyer. He swears wonderfully, we hear--maybe better than the famously irreverent Ben Bradlee, former Washington Post editor. He has never even heard of Work-Life Balance, or thinks it's a foo-foo drink you can order in Lincoln Park. Openly rude to slackers. And wonderfully un-PC. Democrats badly need a guy like that. We hear Obama has offered and he will accept. This is fun. Pinch us.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)
Minnesota U.S. Senate race: Recount over 725 votes.
I'm good enough, smart enough, close enough. Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Recount: The Coleman-Franken brawl drags on".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2008
The Complete Lawyer is now Global.
It's a New Day, and this morning America, as well as the World, welcomes new leaders. And a new issue of the Atlanta-based The Complete Lawyer is out. Several authors, writing on lawyering for clients in Mexico, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Greater China, are lawyers with law firms that are members of the invitation-only International Business Law Consortium. The IBLC is based in Salzburg, Austria, and was established in 1996.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
November 4, 2008: All Americans win.
So America is built to last after all. Even if, like me, you didn't vote for Barack Obama, you're a winner if you voted. John McCain is a great man, and not that different ideologically from Obama. But the win for Obama, our first black commander-in-chief, is a great moment for the United States--that aggressive young country which could never square ideals with reality. Let time put my reservations about President-elect Obama to rest. Everybody won, and the candidates we saw over the last two years who lost party nods were the best crop I've seen in my lifetime. America still has political talent. The process still works, however imperfectly. We still fight in the open air. Yes, I preferred one of "my lot", Hillary Clinton, to be president, and yes I voted for McCain. But even the Clintons must feel pride today. I do.
The Winner
Sore losers--yet somehow happy about it. So sue us.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2008
"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and I may soon be a U.S. Senator."
From pizza to field staff, from lawn signs to phone lines, a campaign costs a lot of money. We could try asking the pharmaceutical companies and Big Oil for big checks, but somehow we don't think they're going to help.
From Al Franken for U.S. Senate, Minnesota, via yesterday's e-mail from his campaign re: "The last (and best) fundraising email of the campaign".
Franken, a liberal Democrat, is an ex-SNL writer-player, Harvard graduate, actor, funnyman, author and broadcaster, with a talented daughter and Renaissance woman WAC? has big crush on. Both Franken and Minnesota first-term Senator Norm Coleman (Franken's polar opposite in all respects) are spending serious fortunes on the race. Franken may win today, too.
"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and I have a shot at Norm Coleman's Senate seat."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2008
Got any money left?
Election 2008: Summary of Federal Campaign Contribution Limits. State of California, too.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Voting, stepping up and America.
No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
For most of us, given the apparent complexity of the world, universe and whatever else is out there, there aren't many absolute principles in play these days. But here's one: All Americans who can vote should vote, even if--as I am doing tomorrow--you are holding your nose and voting for the "least objectionable alternative." The American vote is a special and very hard won thing.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
November 02, 2008
Studs Terkel (1912-2008)
He was a writer, journalist, interviewer, broadcaster, oral history pioneer, Pulitzer Prize winner, UC-educated lawyer who never practiced, part-time actor (query: what famous movie about baseball did he have a big role in?) and Chicago's main Renaissance man. He died Friday home in Chicago at age 96. If you are an American under 60 and don't know who he is, or have never heard of him, feel free to sue the secondary schools and colleges you attended.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:37 PM | Comments (1)